


I'll Fall By Your Side

by Caldera



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Crowleys Fall, Fallen Angels, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands Throughout The Ages, Light Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn, Theological Questions (of sorts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caldera/pseuds/Caldera
Summary: In front of them, the sun was setting over the Andes. It tinged the clouds in a fiery red and the wind carried the smell of rain. At these altitudes, the weather had been constantly changing over the last six hours they had sat there, but they didn’t mind.It was the first time Crowley saw Aziraphale cry._____If Crowley's first Fall could be described as “sauntering vaguely downwards”, then the second Fall could be described as “choosing a ski slope above your level of expertise that starts out easy but a few moments later you are sliding it down at full speed realizing and accepting your own idiocy with just a resigned “ah, I shouldn’t have done that” while a tree approaches alarmingly fast without making any effort to get out of your way.” Only that there wasn’t as much of a tree at the end of Crowley’s slope, but Aziraphale.





	I'll Fall By Your Side

**Author's Note:**

> Good Omens has taken over my life and now I am writing fanfictions again. Sometimes, that's just how it goes.
> 
> If you wanna read the footnotes, you can just click on them and you will jump right to the bottom of the text. If you wanna continue with the regular story, the footnote down there will get you right back. 
> 
> Title taken from Family Tree by TV On The Radio. Apart from being a fantastic song by a fantastic band, it also set the mood for me for this fanfiction. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9-u-Mz85DE

Crowley had not Fallen once, but twice [1]. There were, however, a few fundamental differences between the first and the second time. For one, if the first time he had Fallen could be described as “sauntering vaguely downwards”, then the second time could be described as “choosing a ski slope above your level of expertise that starts out easy but a few moments later you are sliding it down at full speed realizing and accepting your own idiocy with just a resigned “ah, I shouldn’t have done that” while a tree approaches alarmingly fast without making any effort to get out of your way.” Only that there wasn’t as much of a tree at the end of Crowley’s slope, but Aziraphale. 

Another difference between his two Falls that the observant reader might have already been able to guess by now was that the first time Crowley Fell, he Fell From Grace, while the second time, he very much Fell In Love. 

There were more differences, of course. Falling From Grace had been a rather unpleasant affair. It wasn’t even the excruciating pain that resulted from spiraling full speed into sulfur that had made this event so traumatic for Crowley. The real trauma of Falling resulted from the experience of getting cut off from Grace. Angels, as it was known[2], were ethereal beings of love [3]. In more specific terms, this meant that they were directly connected to God’s all-encompassing love. In even more specific terms[4], this meant that an all-encompassing feeling of Love accompanied an angel’s existence like background static noise on a radio. Of course, just like background static noise from a radio, you grow accustomed to it up to the point that you don’t even realize it is there until someone turns off the radio and the silence that fills up its space instead suddenly feels so brutal, so overwhelming, that instead of just meaning “the lack of sound,” silence means “the presence of silence”. 

The silence had surrounded Crowley ever since The Fall. Somewhen around the 5th century B.C., they had all received a memo from headquarters informing them about the phenomenon of “phantom limbs” in human beings. They were instructed to put this knowledge to no good use in their future torture sessions. Ever since then, Crowley thought that what defined being a demon wasn’t all the tempting or torturing, not even all the rebellion against God’s ineffable orders which he never did in the first place. It was more about the constant static background phantom pain of Love that wasn’t there anymore.  
\-----  
_“…and then you take the bread and dip it into the sauce.” A huge smile had lit up on Aziraphale’s face, accompanied by a certain small wiggle of his head and shoulders that more often than not meant that a delicious meal was not far away._

 _“Oh, Crowley. You need to try all of them!” He said while a slave placed a huge salver between them on the carpet._

_“So where do I start, Angel?” Crowley asked with a hint of a smile on his own face._

_Over the centuries, he had learned to appreciate the weird human habit of ingestion but there was no food quite as exciting as the ones he shared with Aziraphale. There was something pure and innocent about the genuine exhilaration that food caused in the angel. The way his face beamed always sparked a low and warm humming in Crowley’s stomach, which he actively tried not to find a name for._

_“This one!” Aziraphale reached for a dish that was filled with an ochre paste, but in his excitement, he knocked over a jug. Beer spilled all over their food._

_“Oh no!” A few times, Crowley had stolen sweet treats from little children [5] but even the most disappointed reaction he had seen couldn’t compete with the pout on Aziraphale’s face. The hum in his stomach suddenly swelled so loud that it physically hurt him._

_“And now I also ruined my robes-!"_

_"You are an angel, just miracle it away”, maybe his tone came off more annoyed than he intended but he was too busy to control his emotions._

_“I am an angel. I can’t just miracle for my own pleasure. That would be selfish.” The suggestion seemed to genuinely appall Aziraphale._

_“Come on, as if you have never done that before,'' Crowley said, flicking his fingers to miracle away the beer._

_“Well, maybe”, Aziraphale admitted grudgingly. “But I can’t remember that this was any of your business.” He reached for the flatbread and tore off a piece. They started to eat as planned, but the mood had permanently shifted. It felt like someone was playing a flute but couldn’t hit the right notes._

_“Ah”, thought Crowley, “I shouldn’t have done that.”_  
\-----  
As much as there was a major difference to Falling with a capital F and falling without one, there was a difference between Love and love. Crowley felt a specific disdain towards most angels [6] because they thought feeling God’s Love all the time made them righteous and morally superior while committing hideous crimes in Her name.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, did not only feel Love, but love. Crowley knew this much ever since the angel told him that he had given away his God-given flaming sword to Adam and Eve. Aziraphale cared, and Aziraphale worried and, most important of all, he was hurt, when others were hurt, even if it was in the name of some ineffable plan, and that made him not much an angel but Aziraphale.  
\-----  
_“And then…and their prayers… they couldn’t..I..I..didn’t.”_

_It was the first time Crowley saw Aziraphale cry._

_In front of them, the sun was setting over the Andes. It tinged the clouds in a fiery red and the wind carried the smell of rain. At these altitudes, the weather had been constantly changing over the last six hours they had sat there, but they didn’t mind._

_In the beginning, the sudden bursts of rain had avoided them miraculously, but after the first bottle of wine, Aziraphale had removed their invisible shelter. “What are you doing, Angel?” Crowley asked him trying to protect his hair from getting wet in panic. But Aziraphale had gone quiet, stretching out his arms and watching the rain drop on him._

_“Don’t you just love it sometimes, Crowley?” He asked pensively. “Being alive, you know? Feeling?”_

_Crowley didn’t answer at first but contemplated Aziraphale who seemed to be completely caught in the moment._

_“I wouldn’t know how not to”, he admitted after some time almost inaudibly. “Wouldn’t know how not to love it.”_

_They sat in quiet for what felt like an eternity, but this silence was a good kind of silence, filled with the moment, the scenery, the smell of the air. the grass underneath them, the taste of wine, the rain on their skin, the sun on their skin and then again, the rain._

_The sun broke through the clouds. A rainbow stretched from mountaintop to mountaintop._

_“Better than the first time”, Crowley remarked. Aziraphale stiffened but he didn’t say anything._

_“I don’t know why you love sleeping”, Aziraphale finally said._

“ _Huh?”, this took Crowley by surprise._

__

_“The one time I tried it, I had a dream.” His voice grew quieter with each word, until it was nothing more than a whisper. “I was on the ark again.” Aziraphale had to pause. He was visibly overwhelmed by grief._

__

_As the first tears ran down Aziraphale`s cheek, Crowley knew with a certainty he never felt before that he would raise heaven and hell to not make his angel feel that way again._

_They sat in silence._

__

_“You know, sometimes I don’t know why She should be forgiven.”, Crowley said, and it lingered between them as they watched the night stretch out before them._  
\-----  
Crowley knew that Aziraphale loved him back. He had known it with an overwhelming sense of certainty for a very long time. It was in the way he looked at him, in the way they “accidentally” kept bumping into each other in the most unexpected places, and in the closeness and familiarity that Aziraphale allowed to grow between them once they got over their “I shouldn’t associate with you” shtick every single time before they went on a date . 

The only thing Crowley didn’t know was for how long Aziraphale had known that he loved him. Not that it mattered anyway. Aziraphale was loyal to heaven. Or rather, Aziraphale was loyal to the greater good and still in denial about the questionability of the greater good of the ineffable plan but Crowley was willing to wait for his angel.

And then came the Apocalypse [7].  
\-----  
_“Our side”, mumbled Aziraphale pensively after some time. It was the first thing he had said after their conversation on the bench. This time, he sounded reassured, as if he was finally making his peace with the whole concept. Or at least that’s what Crowley hoped._

_“Our side, angel”, Crowley repeated softly. He observed the patterns that the passing lights of London-not-Oxford left on Aziraphale’s face. They didn’t say anything for the rest of their drive._

__

__

_As they left the bus, Crowley had to fight a growing feeling of nervousness. In his head, a broken record played on repeat. “Now what?” it asked._

__

__

_Crowley had spent a significant amount of his 6000 years on earth thinking about Aziraphale. Most of the time it was more of a thought in the back of his head that accompanied his every move. But sometimes, more often than Crowley liked to admit, his focus trailed off to his angel completely and he got stuck in his daydreams. But for the absurd amount of time he had spent replaying every possible and impossible “what if”-scenario in his head, he was ridiculously underprepared for this moment. With every moment passing the questions and doubts grew louder shutting down his ability to think._

__

__

_He played it off with coolness. “So that’s my place, nothing special, just a few Da Vinci’s, the usual stuff.”, he said sprawling himself all over the couch. Aziraphale sat down on the small free spot next to him. “Very nice indeed.”_

__

__

_Again, silence. And the noise in Crowley’s head._

__

__

_“Want some cocoa? Books to read, maybe?`` He asked in hopes to ease the awkwardness._

__

__

_“It’s okay.”, Aziraphale said and shuffled uncomfortably. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and looked Crowley in his eyes. Crowley’s heart hammered in his ears like a bass drum. “I am sorry, Crowley.”_

_“You are so-…what?”_

_“I am sorry, Crowley.” Aziraphale repeated. He sounded calm, determined. “You were right from the beginning, and I didn’t listen to you. So many millennia and I couldn’t believe it.” He reached for Crowley’s hand with both hands and hold it gently._

__

__

_It felt like falling, like something in his stomach dropped and fell for years and years and years._

__

__

_“Oh, you don’t…I mean, don’t” He muttered but was interrupted by Aziraphale before he could form a coherent sentence._

_“And I am sorry for ever doubting you and your intentions.” He gently pulled Crowley’s hand close to his heart._

_Love radiated from Aziraphale’s aura. A warm, humming feeling that lulled Crowley in. It felt like he never Fell, like he was part of God’s creation, like he was part of Her unlimited love. But it was also so much more. Because his fingers could feel the warmth of Aziraphale’s skin, could feel the blood pump through Aziraphale’s veins and the heart beating in his chest. They both were so alive. It was a feeling he would never be able to forget like background noise._

_“Oh, Crowley. You have always been on our side, haven’t you?” Aziraphale said in the gentlest of voices before he kissed him._

_____________________________

[1] Of course, he had fallen quite often in his now several millennia-spanning lifetime. His walk, that Aziraphale liked to call to Crowley’s annoyance a “suave swagger” didn’t perfect itself on his own. Now, Falling with capital had been a completely different story.

[2] And as Aziraphale never tired to tell Crowley during their millennia on earth.

[3] „And forgiveness bla bla and All That Is Good bla bla bla. Shut up and pass me the marinara”, as Crowley would add.

[4] For the mortal reader who has no idea what the hell this is supposed to mean. 

[5] They weren’t good for them anyway.

[6] Meaning every single angel he had met except for Aziraphale.

[7] Or rather, it didn't.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beautiful betas for putting up with my punctuation and thank to y'all for getting this far.  
> I am on tumblr as @notgreengardens where I reblog way too much good omens content or whatever my current hyperfixation is.


End file.
